


Lover's Eye

by glinda4thegood



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen, Urban Fantasy, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-08
Updated: 2011-03-08
Packaged: 2017-10-16 19:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glinda4thegood/pseuds/glinda4thegood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Parauniverse: Reflections on love and loss, the story of lover's eyes, and how neither vengeance nor justice compensate for missed chances.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lover's Eye

Human sexuality is a funny thing, as much a willful product of the mind as it is of that old nature vs. nurture debate. My opinion only. I'm no professional mind or body doc. We've all got our views on what the buttons are, and how they got there.

I spend roughly as much time thinking about sex as I spend having sex: not much. But, seated on my porch on this cold February evening, watching the sun set in a blinding red sky, I think about sex. I think about love.

"Red sky at night, lover's delight." That's not how it goes, of course. My breath makes an icy silhouette on the wine glass I've filled with her favorite red wine. Not to my taste, but the whites I favor seem wrong for this occasion.

 

 _Time is a thief, and death may very well be better than life. Is something always better than nothing?_

Old Robin Taylor, Annie's grandfather, stood over her grave a year ago staring at the tombstones already in place beside the new patch of raw earth. Most of Annie's friends -- and she had a lot of them -- muttered and shouldered against each other in confusion at his blunt words. No formal funeral, and a graveside service that consisted of two sentences didn't give them the closure they needed.

I stayed on to watch people straggle back toward their cars, listening to the subdued squawks of displeasure that reminded me of a flock of raggedy crows driven away from roadkill. Old Robin stood between the stones that marked the burial spaces of Annie's parents. I didn't crowd him. The _sense_ had been on me since the moment Annie died, and I could smell weremusk and the salt of his tears.

"All gone." Old Robin closed his hands over the smooth shoulders of Young Robin's tombstone. "My son, his wife. My granddaughter."

"I miss them, too." I agreed with his example. This was not the time for flowering phrases of comfort from some pastoral garden. Howling at the heavens, and the gnashing of teeth, these were proper responses to fate's arbitrary cruelty.

 

The first time I saw Annie, she was four years old, sitting quietly on Old Robin's knee. They were in the grass just beyond the Taylor burial plot. Her parents' funerals had been traditional, I was told. I'd missed them.

Coming back to town after a two-year stint at a farm in North Carolina, I'd stopped at the post office to reactivate my delivery. Behind the counter Charlette was selling stamps and retrieving packages without her usual chatter. Her eyes were puffy and red, and when she saw me she burst into tears and ran for the bathroom. The customer behind me, a man I didn't recognize, actually told me the news. Young Robin and Lily Taylor had been killed in a car accident. The drunken sod who was responsible for the crash had walked away without a scratch.

The news shocked me, and jarred the sense awake. I was home, the ground knew me, and I could feel Old Robin's anguish reaching through soil and rock. When I found him in the cemetery, my first thought was for the solemn-eyed child he held. I had a vivid flashback of sitting on Old Robin's lap when I was only slightly older than she was. The sense was generating those waves of fuzzy hot-flashes spiked with emotion I get during a particularly intense episode.

"Haze, this is Annie." Old Robin stood and put the child's hand in mine, then turned and walked away from us. I knew what he was going to do. Change, and run, and howl until the sorrow was more bearable.

Annie stayed with me for a week, keeping close as I reopened my house and tidied the yard. The first night she cried just after I put her to bed. If the sense hadn't awakened me, I would never have known. I held her while sobs shook her small body, and after a while the tears stopped and she went to sleep. She was silent during most of her stay, Occasionally she would call me by name. At supper, after I said grace, she would look at me and ask "Grampa?"

"Soon, love, soon," I answered six times. On the seventh night Old Robin came just before dinner, thanked me and took her away.

 

The sun and wine were gone. I got up stiffly and brought the wineglass inside. A wave of heat rolled over me as I opened the door. The front room was almost too warm. I poked at the bed of coals in the woodstove, then cracked a window open. I'd probably need to check the greenhouse stove later, but it had been a warm February, and I could feel the temperature wasn't going to fall below freezing tonight.

My table was set for two. I ladled vegetable soup from the iron pot that simmered on top of the woodstove into one bowl, and poured more wine into my glass. I sat staring at the empty bowl for a long time before I broke the single, perfect, crusty loaf of bread, and began to eat.

 

"Tell me what it's like." Annie was fifteen, coated in a thin layer of puppy fat, with a pimple on her nose. "Grandpa's told me what _changing_ is like. Tricia's told me what _seeing_ is like. But I don't get what they mean when they say you have the _sense._ What makes that different from Tricia's second-sight?"

"Pay attention to the bulbs," I scolded. "Those should go in deeper."

We were working in the cold frames, planting true wolf's bane. Old Robin had found another homeowner who wanted to plant a bane boundary. There was a new subdivision on the north side of town that would add at least fifty homes to our community in the next few years. City people were moving into our lives at an alarming rate.

"I was hoping you'd be painting today," Annie grumbled. She didn't have much of a green thumb. She was better with children, with language and laughter.

"Maybe tonight." I finished planting my frame. "I usually describe the sense as a kind of deja vu. Except it's far stronger, and can be pretty specific. Some people call it psychometry. Tricia actually sees images in her mind. I smell things, experience tactile sensations, hear voices and sounds. But I don't see anything."

"Are you glad you have it?" Annie sat back on her heels and wiped her cheek, leaving a streak of dirt and compost on her skin.

The expression in her eyes triggered a small jolt of the sense. I was always too sensitive around her, like we were tuned together in some way. "I don't mind," I said. "Old Robin says my mother had it."

"You don't remember her, either?"

We had that in common. "No. My sister raised me, and Old Robin helped."

"You're not even related to him," Annie said, making it sound like an accusation. "There's a lot of people around our house he takes care of who aren't our family."

Ah. That's what had brought her on a planting day. Teen crisis. "Sweetie, Old Robin is an alpha changer, and pretty much responsible for every para in the area. You can't tell me he neglects you."

"No." The word was like a small stone dropping against a larger stone. "But I can't do anything."

"Annie." I left my bulbs and went to her side, taking her by the shoulders and holding her eyes with mine. "What a whopper. If you mean you don't have a paranormal talent, that seems to be true. Your father and mother were normal, too. Are you stupid, ugly, mean or unmotivated?"

She grinned in spite of herself. "No. I'm also not gullible."

"Good. You don't need me to tell you Old Robin loves you just as you are. You don't need me to tell you I love you just the way you are. But, being where you are in life right now, it doesn't hurt to hear the words."

"Inspirational pitch," Annie sniffed, turning back to her bulbs. "Do you do ritual magic? The kids at school say you sell love potions and stuff."

"Their mothers wish," I said, frustrated that after all these years townspeople still showed up on my doorstep looking for potions and poisons. "But I can give you a cream for your skin. I work with nature, not against it." I looked at her more closely. "Annie?"

She shrugged, avoiding my eyes.

"There's no way on earth to force love," I said carefully. "Have you talked to Old Robin about birth control . . . and stuff."

"Oh, Haze!" The back of Annie's neck was scarlet. "I know about . . . stuff."

 

I cleared the table, lit three cranberry-scented candles, and turned off the electric lights. Normally I read after dinner, or listen to music and paint. Tonight it seemed necessary to sit in one corner of the couch, watch candle shadows, and reflect. Alone.

I'm not compulsive about solitary living. I've had offers, I've made offers. But, like I told Annie years ago, you can't force love. And anything else didn't interest me. So I'm nearly 50 now, still tending my garden alone. I've even avoided the pet trap.

 

"You need a cat, or a dog," Annie said, pouring wine from the bottle she'd carried under her arm. Her hands were full of cuttings when she'd shown up on my doorstep.

"Cats kill birds, dogs dig up plants. Are you a teacher now?" I asked. She'd been gone for five years. Why she'd chosen a university on the west coast, a million miles away from friends and family, none of us knew. Why she'd chosen to work in the same place during summer vacations was also still a mystery.

"I'm a teacher." Annie smiled, and lifted her glass into the air. "The student teaching went great. I've been offered a job in Belham."

"Congratulations. I'll bet Old Robin is happy. Belham's only thirty miles away. A hell of a lot closer than California," I said pointedly.

"I had to go," Annie said, as her smile faded. "You went away for a while. I love my family, and I love this place. I never wanted this to be everything, though."

Annie had changed. The baby fat was gone, her skin was pink and healthy, and she moved with self-assurance and grace. Looking at her sweet, honest face, the shine on her hair, the shine in her eyes, I felt the sense prickle alive in me. I heard ghostly echoes of children laughing, smelled cookies baking. "You're home now," I managed to say around the lump in my throat. "That's what matters."

 

The rising whine of a snowmobile going far too fast came in with the gust of cold air that was bringing goosebumps to my neck. I left the warm couch corner and closed the window. Pulling on my boots, I stepped outside onto the porch. The sky was dark with clouds, and there was a damp smell in the air that promised snow or sleet for sometime in the next few hours.

The greenhouse air was even damper, but warm. I shut the door quickly behind me, and stood in the darkness listening to the creak of the hot water pipes, and breathing in the good, potent odors of dirt and herbs. The stove had a thick bed of neon orange coals that seethed and snapped. I added a couple of pieces of wood that caught fire almost at once. It was a hypnotic combination, the surge of water through piping, the crackle of wood being eaten by flame. I pulled up my potting stool and sat staring down the darkly sketched interior of my life.

 

"I haven't told you the most terrible part."

Annie had been crying silently for at least five minutes, nestled in my arms like the four-year old I'd once held.

"Take your time." I was furious, and trying to hide my reaction to her latest news. I'd met Brett Atkins at one of Old Robin's gatherings, and the sense had risen in me with a virulence that sent me home with a migraine. Annie never asked what I thought of him. I think she knew.

"He can be a little . . . insincere in social settings," she'd tried to explain once, over Saturday night dinner at my house.

Insincere my ass; the man had more faces than he had socks. His newest face was that of husband. I'd found Annie at my door in the early hours of a cold Sunday morning, her face blotchy and red. After three years of -- what do they call it now? -- being a couple, he'd told Annie he was getting married.

In a nutshell, Mr. Atkins had political ambitions. It wasn't personal, he had assured Annie. He truly cared for her. But he'd found a woman with the social and family connections that would assure his successful career --and none of them were para.

Annie's voice broke several times while she told the story. "He said Old Robin was a handicap. He belongs to the 100% Party."

That would be the 100% Human Party, or one-humpers, as the paras called them. Somehow I wasn't surprised at Atkins' political affiliation.

"Did you know?" I asked.

"I knew. God forgive me for being such an idiot."

There was more anger than hurt in her cry. I was glad. It meant she would heal quickly. "So he was seeing her at the same time he was with you?"

"Yes. He said it took so long to make up his mind because he really loved me. Really loved me," she repeated the words, wondering, like a child. Then she broke down completely, convulsed in silent anguish.

"I haven't told you the most terrible part," she said, pushing away from my arms and clutching at the tissue box. She blew her nose hard and took a deep breath. "Just after he told me. I couldn't take it in. He held me, and told me how much it hurt him to hurt me. I told him I loved him, and wanted him to be happy." Annie's eyes changed color like the coals in a wood fire. "I let him . . . we had sex. I'm so stupid."

"You're not stupid," I said calmly. I couldn't let Annie see the enormous rage her words had woken inside me. "You're honest, and loving, and expect people to reciprocate. Your judgment could have been better. I don't ever again want to hear you're dating a humper."

"Oh, Haze." Annie was half-laughing, half-sobbing. "What will I tell Old Robin?"

"Tell him you broke up. He doesn't need the rest spelled out." I pulled out my paints and brushes, and searched for a fresh oval of polished bone. "Wipe your eyes and sit down."

"You're going to paint? Now?" Annie sat down on the opposite side of the kitchen table, still blowing her nose and swallowing leftover sobs.

"Do you want to get over him?" I pushed back the sense with my anger, ignoring my usual better instincts.

"I think I've already started. What are you doing?"

"I'm making something for you to give Mr. Atkins." I smiled at her startled expression. "Let me tell you a story."

I glanced up at her face, and began to sketch on the bone. "Once upon a time there was a prince who fell in love with a farm girl. This was during a time when real princes never married farm girls, so it was no surprise to either of them when the prince's parents married him off to a young woman with enough rank to satisfy the social conventions of the time. The prince was sad, but resigned. The farm girl was sadder than the prince, and not quite as resigned to their fate. She took her meager savings and went to a famous artist. _Paint my portrait,_ she begged. _For I would have him remember me._

"The famous artist asked the farm girl if she'd naked for him. When she refused, he laughed and said her money was insufficient to buy a portrait, and gently mocked her for supposing the new princess would allow the prince to keep it anyway."

"Is this a true story?" Annie asked, suspiciously. "I've heard something like it before."

I began to fill in my sketch with small brush strokes. "Based on a real event," I laughed. "As the famous artist watched, a tear quivered in the corner of one of the farm girl's lovely blue eyes, then fell to sparkle like a diamond on her thick, dark lashes. Caught by the beauty of the sight, the artist relented. He found a piece of ivory on his workbench, and began to paint. _I'll take half your money,_ he said when he'd finished. _Take the other half to a jeweler and have this set as a covered dangle. Give that to your love._

"When the farm girl looked at the piece of ivory, she discovered it bore the likeness of her eye." My anger submerged into the sense. Form and color followed the motions of my brush, and something more substantial.

"Lover's eyes," Annie said. "I've heard of them. They're real antiques. Mistresses would give them to their lovers."

"This won't be quite the same," I said. "I've been painting reproductions, they sell well at craft fairs. When it dries, I'll attach the findings and send it to you. You can decide what you want to do with it." I was nearly finished painting. I took a dab of color and spread it on a jag of wood I sometimes used as a palette, then eased a long, silver pin from the brush bag. "Give me your finger."

Annie looked at me. "I thought you didn't do magic," she said, slowly extending her hand.

"It's not a habit." A bead of blood followed the pin's sting. I held her finger and directed the fall of a single drop. I mixed the blood and paint, and finished the painting.

"You didn't paint my eye," she said, coming to stand in back of me. Her fingers went involuntarily to her lower lip. "Is my mouth so pale? What happened to the color from the blood?"

"It's there." I approved the neutral, emotionless rendering of her sweet mouth. "It will darken with time."

Annie sighed, and turned away. "I'm going home now, Haze."

"I'll send it to you. If you give it to him, he'll never forget what he did to you."

"Never?" Annie's voice was troubled. "I don't think I want any kind of revenge."

"Don't think of it as revenge," I said, cleaning my brush. "Think of it as justice."

 

A loud snap from the fire brought me back to the present. My hips ached. I suspected arthritis had begun to settle into my seasoned bones. I pushed the stool back against the wall, tightened down the handle on the woodstove, and left the warm comfort of the greenhouse. I was shivering by the time I reached the house. It was too early to go to bed, but I couldn't find the motivation to do anything else. I set the covered pot of soup on the back step, and threw two more logs into the stove. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and pulled on a clean sweatshirt.

My bedroom seemed larger than usual tonight, and emptier. I rummaged for a book, selecting a collection of essays on plants. Leaning back against a wall of pillows, the book held loosely in my hands, I closed my eyes and listened to emptiness creak around the house.

 

I'd woken up just before midnight, a year ago, screaming her name. The air around me vibrated with pain and confusion. The sense was so strongly in control of me that I didn't actually know what I was doing until a patrol car picked me up over a mile from the house. The deputy had recognized me, and although I was barefoot in the February night, wearing only underwear and a sweatshirt, he knew where I was going and why.

She died before we got there. I knew the moment it happened, the sense of her death striking me like surgery without any anesthetic. Annie's car had been hit head-on by a drunk driver cresting Varnett's hill in the wrong lane.

"It's almost like a curse," I heard the deputy say in a quiet voice to one of the ambulance attendants. "How can I tell Old Robin?"

"He knows." I stood back and watched them cover her body with gentle, respectful hands. "Can someone take me to the Taylor house?"

 

People die, people deal. I see Old Robin in the hills, and hear midnight singing from the were-community more often lately. Atkins didn't come to the cemetery when they buried her, and until last week I didn't know what Annie had done with the painting.

He found me in the greenhouse. I didn't recognize him at first glance. His hair was prematurely scattered with an unattractive dirty grey color, and his flesh seemed to have shrunk around his bones in an unhealthy way. He walked up to the bench where I was potting, stopped and stared at me.

"You're the painter?" His eyes seemed wild, darting about the greenhouse, avoiding my face.

"I'm a licensed herbalist. I do a little painting," I agreed, separating garlic bulbs into small pots. "What can I do for you?"

"You painted the thing. Make it stop." Atkins' fists were clenched and trembling.

I quit potting. "Make what stop?"

"Her mouth. Her mouth." Spittle flew from his lips, and he wiped one shaking hand across them. "When I close my eyes, I see it. I feel it. The practitioner said there was no magic on it, the lying bitch. I crushed it, but I still can't sleep. I can't . . ." Atkins began to laugh, a frightening, wild sound.

"Whatever's happening to you, I have no part in it," I said, with nearly complete truthfulness.

"I'll give you money!" he screamed.

"There's nothing I can do for you." I went back to my potting.

"My wife . . .we can't have sex. I think about her mouth. I can't . . . The drugs didn't work, the doctors didn't help. My wife said I had to try surgery -- but now she won't even talk to me." His face was turning purple, and I could see the small veins on the surface of his nose. "They found out that I went to a practitioner. Her father has pulled his support. My career is in the toilet."

"You need to leave," I said. "Plants are sensitive to extreme emotional distress."

"I'm turning you in to the witchfinders," Atkins raved. "I checked -- you're not even a registered para. You've broken the law. They'll torture you. I'll tell them about her mouth. I see it every time I close my eyes now. It's so red, so soft . . ." He turned and ran from the greenhouse, stumbling over the threshold, and leaving the door flung wide in his crazed retreat.

 

The book slid from my lap and thudded to the floor, waking me from a drifting contemplation of my inner eyelids. I could sleep, after all.

I switched off the light on my nightstand and pushed the pillows into their usual, comforting shapes. I could smell scents of balm and lavender from the sachets that hung next to my bed, and the fainter odor of the braided garlic that decorated the window.

In the dark, as my mind and body slowed, I marvelled at my own lack of reaction to Atkins' threats. But, practically, there was no way anyone could prove I was para, and there were only two active witchfinders in the entire country. I doubted that one complaint about me from a raving lunatic was enough to do anything but get my name on a long list. He had destroyed the painting, after a practitioner had judged it to be free of magic. In the end, most people would judge him the victim of his own guilty conscience and unstable personality.

Drifting into the abyss of sleep, I am an empty shell, a drop of blood caught by gravity. I see her smiling here, with her sweet, honest face, and her full red mouth.

Annie. I can't be sorry I did it. I'm only sorry. . .


End file.
